


Ormolu

by More_night



Series: Drop [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, M/M, Season/Series 01, jack does indeed not giggle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 14:35:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6570076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Planning to discuss the newest Ripper victim, Jack goes to Hannibal’s office and... well. </p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5275232">Drops</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ormolu

**Author's Note:**

> All my love and gratitude to [b_minako](http://archiveofourown.org/users/b_minako/pseuds/b_minako) and [rav3nsta9](http://archiveofourown.org/users/effie_chan/pseuds/rav3nsta9) for sharing their thoughts on this.
> 
> (Also, this has probably got 200% less kink than you're expecting.)
> 
> And if you haven't seen voordeel's [Glitter and Gold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RspfMI-rZpw) video, I recommend doing it now. Right now, this moment.

 

 _Ormolu (n.)_ : From the French, _or moulu_. A gilding technique in which gold is applied to objects in ground or powdered form instead of, more traditionally, in leaves.

 

* * *

 

It was past 9 PM when Jack parked his car in front of Hannibal Lecter’s office. Gushes of winter’s first snow frothed in aureate bursts under the street lights. He made it inside swiftly, the O’Maley file tucked against his side, brow furrowing, muddied thoughts filling then leaving his mind like the coming and going of waves and veils. Inside, he thought, there would be fire and light and he would see clearly.

He knocked and took off his gloves while Hannibal’s measured steps approached behind the closed door. “Jack,” Hannibal greeted. “Good evening.”

“Dr Lecter,” Jack said. The other man was dressed down, only enough for things to be slightly off. Tie on, but wearing only his waistcoat and dress shirt, the right sleeve rolled up, but not the left one. Hannibal did not immediately step aside to let him in. “Am I interrupting you?”

From inside, came the sound of papers shuffling. A sheet being flipped then set down. Jack frowned.

“You do usually call,” Hannibal explained, a welcoming smile forming. “Even if there’s no need to. Please, do come in.”

Jack stepped in. He paused when he found Will Graham sitting at Dr Lecter’s desk, stiffening into formality as Jack came in. There was a pile of papers to his left, a taller one to his right and a brandy glass at arm’s reach. “Will,” he said.

“Jack,” Will mirrored the observational tone.

Jack’s eyes darted to Hannibal. The psychiatrist made his way toward the other table near the lit fireplace. He stopped to brush two pencil shavings from the drawing in progress, then he moved to get the brandy bottle and a glass from the cabinet. Running his fingers absently on the file he held, Jack brought his eyes back to Will. “What are you doing here?”

Will reached for his drink. “Grading,” he said.

“You have an office.”

“Yes. I do.”

Jack approved sternly. “Which brings us back to my initial question,” he said.

Before Will could answer, Hannibal offered to take Jack’s coat and held out a brandy glass in exchange. “Please sit down,” Hannibal offered courteously, motioning to the armchair near the fire, halfway between the desk and the drawing table.

“Thank you.” Sitting down cautiously, Jack put the file in his lap. At the desk, Will’s left hand had gone to his forehead, while his right scribbed a comment down – three, four lines of words in red. In Jack’s head, cogs turned. The absence of any words spoken made it feel both unbelievable and real. For a moment, Jack hesitated between which one it was.

Having refilled his glass and Will’s, Hannibal sat down before his drawing. “Has there been new developments in the O’Maley murder?”

“Yes,” Jack answered. “Gold powder in the lungs. Trachea was sewn. Along with the rest.” He handed the file to Hannibal. “I was hoping for your insight,” he added.

“Naturally.” Hannibal stared at his drawing, grave, as if he was considering something unaccountable. Then he pushed his sketching to the side, lined the pen and scalpel alongside it and opened the file. “The Chesapeake Ripper?”

“Two-hundred percent. Probably his most baroque, abundant piece so far,” Will answered, not looking up from his grading. “He took the heart out, wrapped it in paduasoy white silk and placed it in the stomach. Extracted the stomach and placed it in a velvet giftbox which Mr O’Maley held on his crotch. Cut out his cheeks and the flesh from the back of his neck.”

 _Mr O’Maley’s_ joues _wrapped in brown paper beside him, Hannibal peeled a third garlic clove, careful to extract the infant sprouting green inside. The faint warmth of the oven bathed the room. When Will would be here, the smell of the slowly roasted garlic would be lingering, mixing with the starker one of the sautéed meat._

“A gift of sorts,” Jack interpreted.

“We discovered the work on the trachea and lungs at the autopsy,” Will added.

“A gift or a well-hidden secret,” Hannibal said. “How much gold powder?”

Jack sipped from his glass. “About fifteen grams.”

“He seriously had half an ounce worth of gold in his lungs?” Will asked.

“Zeller’s on it. Says there might be more in the lung tissue,” Jack said.

Hannibal nodded. “Gold powder could be carried through the lung walls into the blood vessels. Although this would be slowed down by death.”

“We’re working with the assumption that the why is more interesting than the how,” Jack said.

“Gold’s precious. Could be a token to buy passage in the afterlife,” Hannibal suggested, aligning the sheet of paper with the pictures in the file. Wire, clamped down on the rigid tissues of the trachea. The farthest one on the left was slightly off. Perhaps it was the angle in the photograph. He remembered placing the clamps with exactly a quarter of an inch between them. And the gold powder, visible only as a dark brown trace now, if not for the iridescent glow it gave off against the lungs’ pink insides. The velvet of the box was tame, tainted in dried blood. It was bright and timidly iridescent in the alley were Hannibal had left him him, arms open for an embrace, the bar’s neon light pulsing in red behind him.

Will finished another paper, marked it, put it in the right pile. The he leaned back and took off his glasses. “It’s also a toxic metal.”

Extending a hand to craddle his glass, Hannibal tilted his head. “Nearly everything can be toxic, if in sufficient amount or if combined inappropriately.”

Jack looked down at the orange waves and frizzes the flames from the fireplace extracted from his brandy. Then a thought came to him. He eyed his own coat, hanging from the antique coat rack near the entrance door. No other hooks on the rack were used. “Where’s your coat?” he asked Will.

The younger man held his gaze for a time. Not really, but Jack felt his eyes’ prick like insect legs somewhere near his face, signaling that they were there, delicate, safeguarding. Will pointed at the wall behind Jack near the liquor cabinet. “Over there,” he said. Jack turned around. And there it was, khaki and rumpled, on the coat-peg, two hooks left of Hannibal’s.

“What was Mr O’Maley’s profession?” Hannibal asked, causing Jack to stop staring at the coats and turn back to him, contained.

“Owned a golf club,” he said.

“And his personal life?”

Jack shrugged. “Distinctly unremarkable. Married, no kids. Couple friends.”

“Did he have affairs?”

“Vengeance?” Jack huffed a chuckle.

Will leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes briefly. There was something, Jack noticed, both in the way he did it and in the way Hannibal remained unconcerned by it. “It’s not the gold powder. It’s the sewn trachea,” Will said.

A bubble of air in one of the logs burst with a loud crack. “Lungs are the organs of life and breath, but also the source of words,” Hannibal continued.

“Words of gold are words of seduction, infused with worth,” Jack went on.

“Not so much precious as key to all other worth. Prized for its ductility,” Will said, absorbed. “Pliable. Or made pliant.” He swivelled the chair so that it faced the fire. “We’ll need a social profile. Not necessarily lovers, but friends, acquaintances, even business partners. Everyone Mr O’Maley might have wooed then neglected or rejected. Ripper could be among them.”

“Beverly was thinking about tracing the gold powder,” Jack agreed.

“It’s not very common,” Hannibal said. “Difficult to acquire. Costly. Did Ms Katz consider paint?”

For a moment, Jack watched Dr Lecter, the wrinkles evened out, perfect honesty, not quite transparency. “I didn’t see your car outside, Will. You parked it in another street?”

“I must have, Jack,” Will started. “Or I walked.” Jack held his gaze and Will met him. “Gold powder could have been precipitated from paint,” Will said, after a moment's silence.

Jack sighed. “I don’t care about the paint, Will. We’ll get back to that.” He got up and drank his brandy down, finding the room confining, as if it had suddenly changed nature, and become secret. He turned to Hannibal, sharply. “Are you two-…”

“Yes,” Hannibal stated, simply.

“The whole… doctor-patient thing?”

“I wasn’t really a patient here,” Will said.

Jack’s eyes jumped to Will. “Why didn’t you tell me about this stuff?”

Will got up, gaze unwavering. The rest of him was wholly closed. “I have a talent, Jack. You have a use for that talent. We fit together that way. Hannibal was part of that fit,” he said, voice slowing down when he said the other man’s first name. “The rest’s mine.”

Walking over to Dr Lecter’s drawing table, Jack placed his empty glass down. It made a clear sound against the wood. “Same question,” he asked Hannibal.

“Same answer, Jack. You asked me to do a job and I did it. For a time.”

Now, the O’Maley case was gone from his mind. Jack took the file from Hannibal’s table, then went to pick up his scarf and coat. “Is this new?”

Hannibal turned toward Will in a minuscule shift. “It’s been a little over a month,” he said.

“37 days,” Will clarified.

“And why do I know it just now?”

Hannibal rose from his chair, fluid and ceremonial. “Nothing’s changed that should matter to you. We are only particles drifting in gas, whose binds have changed.”

“It’s nice to know when particles recombine,” Jack said, drawing the lapels of his coat’s collar up against his neck sharply. “That way you don’t think you’re breathing air when it’s argon, or-…”

“Mistaking dust for gold pigment,” Will said.

Jack stayed still for a time, file in hand, eyes drawn to the fire. A log of wood fell atop the others, a round piece of ember was blown to the floor, where it burned a bright red, then faded, leaving flakes of ash behind. The FBI Agent watched them both in turn. Neither looked at each other now. Will’s eyes were set everywhere, vaguely downward, Hannibal’s were on Jack, subdued but frank. Jack nodded in both their directions in turn. “Hannibal. Will.” Then he walked away to the patient exit.

The psychiatrist followed and insisted on holding the door open for him. “Good evening, Jack.”

Will sat back down. “Do talk to Beverly,” he said, before Jack was out of hearing range. “About the paint.”

 

* * *

 

Hannibal shut the door noiselessly behind Jack, then walked back to Will. “Did I presume?”

Will was leaning back in the chair, curls of hair splayed against the leather. The other man crossed the room until he came to lean against the edge of the desk, beside Will. “No,” Will said. “He’d have found out eventually.”

“Would you rather he never had?”

Will shook his head once. “I’d rather not work for Jack. I’d rather not have nightmares. I’d rather not be with anyone but my dogs, most of the time.” His eyes stopped on Hannibal. “Mostly anyone.” Will’s face was a mix of fond and contemplative. “This is what I have.”

“Yes.” Among things gained in this new state of affairs was the fact that Hannibal could observe Will openly. This way, it was possible to notice the more minute changes in his expressions. He had not entirely managed to inventory them yet. At the moment, he wondered if Will was doing the same with him.

Hannibal’s gaze flickered down to the place in Will’s jaw where a vein beat under the skin when he slept. “What?” Will asked him, less tense now, opening up the way the sky pales with the upcoming dawn.

A corner of Hannibal’s mouth curled. “This shirt looks good on you,” he said, touching a finger to the soft beige wool, above Will’s right elbow.

The fireplace’s light caught Will’s cheek as he angled the chair. His knees met Hannibal’s legs. “You do think that,” Will said. “But you appreciated it when I came in.”

“I still appreciate it. I could simply feel the need to verbalize it,” Hannibal said, slightly more candid than he had intended.

“You were assessing me, trying to see if I’m angry,” Will countered. He took Hannibal’s hand and circled it where the palm met the wrist, where the shirt’s coolness let way to warm skin. “I’m not.”

Hannibal gently freed his hand from Will’s grip and lifted it to the other man’s face face, grazing a knuckle against the skin of the cheek, the hollow near the ear, the shadow of dark hair. He stopped and frowned at the rough texture. “You shaved.”

“This morning. No aftershave.”

“Because I don’t like it?”

“You want me to keep using it?”

Like the reverse of dismantlement, a weight sunk in Hannibal’s chest and shoulders. He did not know exactly what it was, but suddenly he had become a mix of stone and heightened emotions. As if all parts inside him had both stopped moving entirely and were now held together with a harmonious hum. Since things had changed, he had fantasized killing Will more often than not, behind the opaque glass of his eyes. He did not do so now. “It’s a delicate attention,” he said. “But I got used to it.”

“Also-...”

“Also I like that it allows me to know whenever you’re near, yes.”

Will hunched forward slightly, clasping his hands together. “What else do you like?”

“Right now?”

“Okay,” Will said. “Let’s fence it to right now.”

Reaching out, Hannibal brought his hand near the side of Will’s face, but did not touch the skin, only tracing the line of his profile in the glowing air that surrounded it. “At the moment, the reflections of the flames on your face make it appear gilded, both magical and worldly, as if metal was fitted exactly to every pore of your skin,” he said. “That my observation of you doesn’t make you feel threatened delights me to no end. The fact that when you look at me I ignore what it is exactly that you seek to reach alone suffices to make me desire your presence. But most of all-…”

“I know what goes on in your head just from the way _you_ look at me.”

Hannibal let his hand fall. “I still fear one day this will trouble you.”

Will smiled. “That I know that you’re…” He arched his eyebrows. “Somewhat of a mess?”

“To a degree.”

The younger man got up, his shoulder brushing against Hannibal’s as he gathered the piled papers and began to order them. “Commonplace for psychiatrists,” he said. “And I can’t really lecture anyone on unsoundness of mind.” Hannibal felt the warmth coming off Will’s skin even through the wool shirt he wore. The candied smell of brain-swelling had decreased since he had begun to include steroids and anti-inflammatories in Will’s meals, coffee, wine. The fever had yet to recede, but the visions had diminished in frequency.

“As far as psychiatrists are concerned, most do use a ‘misery loves company’ type of rationalization, I believe,” he approved. And Will’s smile widened, and still the fascination was not gone, and Hannibal felt the floor vanish, right under his feet. He did not fall, he was just lifted.

Will placed the assignment papers inside beige files, attached them with a clip and slipped them inside his bag. “I didn’t think I wanted to be known,” he said.

“You thought you would be fine, threading alone in a world where people would be blind to what you are, craddled in the motionlessness of rivers and trees.” Hannibal had taken his fingers to clasp the nape of Will’s neck, where life was fragile, the brainstem accessible through the opening of the vertebras, the nerves and the mind waiting to give away.

“You’re part of that world. Immaterial, more like a thought that never stops uncoiling, or a voice that talks, unnoticed and fair,” Will said.

Eye contact had been rare before. Now Will’s eyes were everywhere, all the time, searching and dimly knowing that they were not searching to find, but only to feel with Hannibal, souls side by side. He looked at Hannibal now. And again, as he had so often done in the past days, weeks, Hannibal knew that he would show him, someday, what he was. That Will would find that he already knew.

“What’s on your mind?” Hannibal asked, noticing the other man’s attention slipping away.

Will turned away to close his bag, breaking contact with Hannibal’s hand on his neck. “Jack.”

The warmth from the fire reached their legs. Hannibal bent down to take the ember, cold and black now, and throw it back in the fireplace. “He’s not a kind of man to obsess over this,” he said. “He may ponder it for a time, but it will pass.”

“He’ll be looking at this like a crime scene,” Will explained, shaking his head. “We’re the body. There will be clues and indications.”

Hannibal smiled. “And a murderer?”

Things were recent enough that Will was not used yet to Hannibal's smile. He let it reach his heart, his chest, until it had thoroughly warmed him. “A chain of events,” he amended. “That occured when he had his back turned. Jack Crawford doesn’t like to turn his back on anything. I’m just hoping he won’t perform the autopsy in public.”

“For all his bluntness, Jack doesn’t ignore courtesy.”

“He’ll talk about it with his wife,” Will noted. The thought of others talking about it made him feel exposed. Worse _than naked. Gutted in public. His organs taken, still living, and spread around him, out of reach._

Hannibal nodded nonchalantly. “Just as we are going over the matter now.”

Will ran his hand over his eyes, down his chin. “They’ll giggle.”

Lifting his hand to Will’s face, Hannibal caught the other man’s fingers. He traced the subtle paths of veins under the skin, from the knuckles to the wrist bone. Allied with aluminium, gold became a fierce violet. Like the blood that ran here, in a deep and secret red, dark and thick once it had surrendered its oxygen to the lungs. “I don’t believe Jack giggles,” he said.

Will’s hand was motionless in Hannibal’s. Will let it feel heavy and heavier, like it sunk. “It could have been worse…” he admitted. Jack coming unannounced to Wolf Trap _last Sunday morning, peeking in through the windows whose blinds Will never fully closed, catching a glimpse of them on Will’s bed. Hannibal’s face buried in Will’s neck, one of Will’s legs wrapped around him. Will’s hand holding onto Hannibal’s hair, lips smeared on his temple in a kiss that never ended. The pale light reflected on the fields of gray and brown outside catching on Hannibal’s brow when he pushed himself up to thrust deeper. The adoration_ spilling from his eyes, into the room, holding them together. “Way worse, all things considered.”

 

* * *

 

Jack did not stop frowning as he took off his tie and jacket, then began unbuttoning his shirt. For a moment longer, Bella concentrated on the words on the page, but she was losing track. “What is it?” she asked.

Her husband sighed. She could tell he was not exactly angry, something more detached, displeased or curious in a bothersome fashion. “Hannibal Lecter. And Will Graham.”

She placed her book on the nightstand. “What about them?”

Turning on the bedside lamp on his side, Jack retrieved his pajama from where it was folded, on the bed. “Hannibal Lecter _and_ Will Graham,” he said. Bella lifted an eyebrow slowly. “Discuss,” Jack prompted.

She gave a short laugh. Lively and musical. “It’s none of your business. It’s even less our business.”

Jack walked to the adjacent bathroom. “I’d have bet money Will had a crush on Alana Bloom,” he said, over the noise of water pouring in the sink.

Bella took her book back into her lap and crossed her fingers over it. “If I recall, you were also willing to bet money that I had a thing for Claudio Parmello.” It reminded her of Italy, when her hands were less old and her skin more supple. But then Jack was not there yet. He had caused the riddles and the stiffness and it was hers entirely.

“Who’s Claudio Parmello?” Jack said from the bathroom.

She exhaled audibly and fetched her bookmark from the right page. “I’m not doing you the favor of reminding you.”

When Jack returned from the bathroom to take out his own book, he found Bella waiting for him, eyes smiling. Jack sat and fluffed the pillows. “Will looked like he wanted to rip my face off,” he said.

Bella tilted her head in disbelief. “Did you catch them-…”

“No,” Jack said. “I dropped by Dr Lecter’s office to talk with him about some new evidence on the O’Maley murder. And Will was...” Jack gestured for a time with his reading glasses, fumbling for the right word. “There.”

“You inferred it from that alone?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Well… Things were said.” He pulled the sheets to his waist and stopped his mind from wondering if Hannibal and Will were doing that, also, right now, on the other side of town. He brought his memory to Italy instead. God, the heat and the sun. So much that the streets’ pavement became oven walls. And they were all cooked, boiling and sizzling. All except his own pure angel. “And Claudio Parmello was the tall italian lieutenant who had spikes in his hair. And you definitely had a thing for him,” he recalled. “Before I came along.”

“I didn’t know how to have more than a thing for anyone before I met you,” Bella said.

“I’d have won that bet about Parmello.”

“I would never would have agreed to it in the first place.” She yawned discreetly, curling her fingers against her lips, litheness melting into perfection. “They’ll be fine. They’re both pieces of work,” she added.

Jack looked at her over his reading glasses. “Dr Lecter’s a piece of work?”

“I suppose he hides it better,” Bella said. She clicked her light off. Against the gray pillowcase, her skin shone golden, as if it had soaked up the light. “You don’t do well with change,” she said softly.

“I deal with change all the time.”

“Doesn’t mean you like it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's disappointing when people you're subscribed to post in another fandom and you receive an update e-mail, are initially happy, then go like mhe. Also posting this to compensate for the EFC piece from a few minutes ago. :)
> 
> On [tumblr](https://davantagedenuit.tumblr.com/).


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